John Kerry outlines Syria options

California Rep. Brad Sherman said today that during his closed-door briefing on Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry laid out a full range of options on how the United States could respond to its intelligence that showed the Syrian government has used chemical weapons in its deadly civil war.

“The options we could go through, it’s everything from diplomatic opposition to Assad, to supporting refugees, to cash for groups, to weapons to groups to a no-fly zone. All of those are on the table. And yes, I’m not breaching anything classified to say that the secretary laid out what some of those options would be, and we all know what they are,” said Sherman, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade.

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Sherman was hesitant to say, however, whether he believed the “red line” drawn by President Barack Obama had been crossed.

“I’m a civil lawyer, where preponderance of the evidence is sufficient. My friends who practice criminal law require no reasonable doubt. I would say there’s enough evidence for a civil verdict. There’s a preponderance of the evidence. But I can’t say that it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt yet that these weapons were used by forces loyal to Assad, that they did not come into the hands of dissident groups, etc.,” Sherman said. “The second question is why would the Syrian regime use these weapons deliberately in a very small way. There was no significant military advantage to the use of these weapons.”

Sherman said he didn’t believe that Bashar Assad was “deliberately playing footsie” with the red line.

“There was no intelligent plan to benefit from the use of chemical weapons for the Assad regime,” he said.\

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 11:54 a.m. on April 26, 2013.